Being an Expert in Simplicity

When you start a health blog, it’s often because you’ve been living a healthy lifestyle for a while now. You understand what it takes to be fit and want to share your knowledge with others. You know all the basics; you want to give your readers more. So you get super excited and start researching elaborate healthy recipes, very intricate workouts, or New Age motivational chants. Then on a day you don’t have much to say, you do a quick post on your workout clothes or nail polish. And this becomes one of your most popular posts.

Why? Because people want simple advice from the experts. They want information from people they trust that they can read and immediately put into action. Since many of us have been eating well and working out for years upon years now, we forget that our day to day habits are not typical of most people.  The things that we do that are second nature to us are foreign territory to others. After a while, we become experts on these things without even trying.

Becoming an expert is a side effect of discovering your own healthy path. An expert is simply a person with an extensive knowledge of a particular subject — from years of trying new things (Zumba, artichokes), making a lot of mistakes (running long distances in a new outfit), adjusting when things stop working (reintroducing carbs), reading everything you can find on the subject (Health and Shape magazines), and asking for help along the way (Mom, how do you cook this again?). Most of us have found a healthier lifestyle thanks to experts that we relied on, but now, as health bloggers, we now have an opportunity to give back and become that person for someone else. It is very clear when a blogger is really an expert on a topic or just writing about it; if she really is an expert, she sounds passionate, highlights the really important parts, and can “dumb it down” for the rest of us.

Figuring out your area of expertise is important not only because your readers will love it, but because you will find blogging so much easier. When you’re writing about your “area,” the words for your post will come so easily. It will feel like the easiest post you ever did…and the easier we can make things for ourselves, the better!

So how do you figure out your area of expertise? Ask yourself some of the following questions:

What do your friends come to you for? Whenever a friend is looking for new workout gear, they come to me. They ask everything from price to style to comfort levels. And I almost always have the answer. Other people recognize your special area of knowledge probably before you even do.

When you go on vacation, what do you take with you? These items most likely represent your non-negotiables — what you absolutely must have to stay healthy. You probably are so used to them you forget that they help you along, but it’s the kind of information other people are dying to know.

When you’re reading other health medias (magazines, blogs, etc), what items do you skip? If you catch yourself rolling your eyes at something or feeling like you’ve read the same type of article 100 times, is it because you already know whatever they are trying to get across? (It might be because it’s BS, but hey…)

What is your day to day life like? Try talking it out with a family member or friend. Just start at the beginning and work your way through it. When they react to something (“You ride your bike to work?!”) that you find ordinary, you might realize just how unique it is.

What can you talk about for hours? If someone asks you a simple question (“What sneakers do you like?”) and you give a long-winded answer that includes your entire history of sneakers and thoughts on Nike’s business practices, leaving the question-asker looking a little taken aback and shocked…there’s probably material for a post there!

Once you figure out your area of expertise, play it up as much as you can. When you think about post categories, make your area of expertise a category you use on a weekly basis! Give it a “page” in the navigation link or add something about it to your tagline. The faster people realize what your “thing” is — and realize it’s exactly what they need — the easier it will be to hook them in.

Hopefully these questions give you a good start to keeping things simple, but we’d love to hear more from you! How did you stumble across your area of expertise? And what is it? Did you have any “simple” posts that received a lot of traffic that maybe were you just shining as expert?

Tagged as: being unique, Bridget